Letter from the Editor

Be a swan. Glide serenely over the water. Paddle like hell underneath. Other swans will know the truth.
I first read those words in a poem by Ann Hale many years ago, and the image still makes me smile. As it did this morning when a pair of swans came in Cordorde-like to land a little less gracefully, big feet forward, to paddle away on little Fairhaven Lake.

In the business of newspapering, learning something new is an everyday job. Thus arose the editors’ traditional prod to slacking reporters: It’s a newspaper, not an old paper.
But even editors get stuck in ruts, so my New Year’s resolution is to get out and see the world, starting with Chesapeake Country. That’s what I told Nancy Collery, of Main Street Gallery in Prince Frederick.

Bay Weekly loves a success story — no matter how small — especially if it’s yours

Sandra Olivetti Martin

How are your resolutions coming?
Are you on the road to being healthier, wealthier and wiser in 2011?
We’re talking about sustainability in the human sense here. Our own sustainability.
It’s not only the Bay we need to sustain in health and productivity. Small as each of us humans is, we count too in the big picture of Earth’s sensitively calibrated and mysteriously linked ecosystems. So we’re included in Bay Weekly’s theme of sustainable living.

“You Catholics think you can do anything and then go confess,” said my Lutheran-reared husband as we watched the connivances in The Crime of Padre Amaro, a Mexican-made Academy Award finalist of a couple years back.
If you think I have anything more to say about religion or movies, guess again.

For a few moments this time of year, it’s possible to escape into weightless time. The Christmas Express has arrived and gone, so you no longer need to keep up to speed. 2010, that admirably round year, has nearly run its course. But not quite.
Now’s the time to wrap up old projects. Now’s the time to call the roll of the past year, look at what we’ve achieved — and conceive our hopes for the new year.
In that reflective spirit, Bay Weekly’s last issue of the year brings you the Best of the Bay.

Warm your heart over the stories of neighbors whose giving satisfies the ache of real need

Sandra Olivetti Martin

All Elsa’s grandparents are stumped. What can Santa bring to a nine-year-old who already has two of everything and sometimes 22? She loves Webkinz, but her mother and father say their Webkinz population has already exploded.
There are plenty of things I want to give this granddaughter, but few of them fit in a box that can be wrapped up with a bow.
Ten-year-old grandson Jack, on the other hand, knows just what he wants. Jack wants an iPad.
Those real-world dilemmas played at the back of my mind as I planed this year’s gift guide.

bayweekly.com is not the Emerson College Lady Gaga lipdub. (Find that link below, in Correspondence.) Considerably fewer than a million people read Bay Weekly online.
Nor are we the viral video How to Wrap a Cat for Christmas, which brought the Hartford Current 3,800,442 viewers on You Tube. (See for yourself at http://www.courant.com/news/breaking/sns-viral-video-wrap-a-cat,0,135253....)
But we’ve got enough viewers to crash the server that hosted Bay Weekly’s own web site.